Anxiety Art: This Mortal Coil

This comic is from a series I’ve been working on since 1999, when my son was born, which has slowly been shaping itself into a book. My father died shortly before I myself became a dad, and both those events started me thinking about relationships and history and the responsibilities of parenthood. There’s all the baggage that one picks up from personal, family connections that you want to filter out for your kid. And then there’s the rest of the world — you want to be optimistic for the future, but if you’ve looked at history and are paying any attention at all to how things are going now, it’s a tough prospect. Really, about all I can do is stay alert and keep a sense of humor!

David Sandlin is an artist who teaches printmaking, book arts and illustration at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His illustrations and comics have been published in The Best American Comics 2012 and 2009, The New Yorker, The New York Times and elsewhere. His most recent book is “Mort-Gage,” a visual meditation on the American economy.

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We worry. Nearly one in five Americans suffer from anxiety. For many, it is not a disorder, but a part of the human condition. This series explores how we navigate the worried mind, through essay, art and memoir.